Radiations emitted from cell phones may protect against and even reverse Alzheimer’s disease, a new study has revealed.
Researchers at the University of South Florida conducted a study that exposed 96 mice, most of whom had been genetically altered to develop the Alzheimer’s disease as they aged, to electromagnetic waves generated by mobile phones.

The mice were zapped with 918MHz of frequency twice a day for one hour each time over a period of seven to nine months – the equivalent of several decades in humans, the Herald Sun reported.
The study revealed that in older mice with Alzheimer’s, long-standing exposure to the electromagnetic fields caused deposits in the brain of beta-amyloid, a protein fragment that accumulates in the brain of Alzheimer’s sufferers to form the disease’s signature plaques, to be erased.

Memory impairment in the older mice also vanished, the study showed.
Young adult mice with no apparent signs of memory impairment were protected against Alzheimer’s disease after several months of exposure to the mobile phone waves.

And the memory levels of normal mice with no genetic inclination for Alzheimer’s disease were enhanced after exposure to the electromagnetic waves.
“Frankly, I started this work a few years ago with a hypothesis that the electromagnetic fields from a mobile phone would be deleterious to Alzheimer’s mice,” said lead author Gary Arendash, a professor at the University of Southern Florida.

Based on the findings in mice, the researchers anticipate that electromagnetic field exposure could be an effective, non-invasive and drug-free way to prevent and cure Alzheimer’s disease in humans. (ANI)

Yeah okay, that’s probably quite wise. Is this a case of scientists, given that there are thousands studies and we don’t ever read about them in the newspapers, is this the scientists fudging the numbers? Is it the 5 or 6 corporations that control well over 80% of the media in the United States including over 11,000 magazines? Are the scientists and media acting as corporate shows or have we just somehow overlooked all of this?
It’s a complex situation and I think we’ll know in some years when we look back on this. If we do have a global pandemic of pediatric illness, people are going to ask, “How did this happen?” Well one of the reasons that this happened is that the regulations are not in line with the science, and are not protecting us. So the industry will say these exposure are low, have you heard that, they’re so low.

COMBINED EFFECTS OF WIRELESS RADIATION AND OTHER POLLUTION
But nobody is looking at the combined effect of the exposures. My concern is, if we had a factory beside the school and the fumes from this factory had been shown to cause a series of biological effects; weaken the brain blood barrier, damage to DNA, suppression of the immune system, cardiac effects, and cognitive impairment; how long would that factory stay beside the school? There is evidence that this electro-pollution, now of course we can’t see it, we can’t smell it, most of us can’t feel it, but there is evidence that our children are at risk.

If this is true and wireless technology causes cancer how can society manage now that everything is wireless? It’s everywhere, isn’t it? This is the dilemma. Yeah, it’s in your book, you don’t even have to have a cell phone, you’re been irradiated by the towers. That’s right, I call upon parents and grandparents to realize that now we can’t wait. As the Council of Europe pointed out, the health regulators have not been quick off the mark to protect public health from tobacco, asbestos, lead – remember lead and gasoline?

Wireless Radiation Threatens The Health Of Our Children
Yeah. Well they’ve also found lead in babies’ bibs and in children’s toys. So as a parent I really call upon your viewers to realize that we have to take steps. There are safer solutions. We can keep the technology. Kids in schools can have internet access. But it’s a wired hookup or a fiber optic hook up. So I’ve put a plan in place for my family with the input of world leading experts. I really encourage parents and grandparents or anyone that really cares about their health to realize we have to take action. This is what the Council calls precautionary principle and I really feel it’s well worth our children’s risk. The health of our children is at risk. I mean, don’t you think that we should take action to protect them?

Yeah, it seems like quite a rational thing to do and also to take some of those thousands of studies that you have identified and get them wider publicity. Thank you so much for being here with us. Thank you so much for letting people know what I call – the wireless wake up call.

Dr Crofton makes some very good points. But I would go even further, the real problem is not just wireless radiation it is electromagnetic field exposure generally, we all need to be taking steps to reduce our EMF exposure.

MOBILE phones are an integral part of modern telecommunications. The effect of mobile phone radiation on human health has always been a controversial subject. Now, neuroscientists from Bochum have for the first time explained the effects of high frequency electromagnetic fields (HEFs) derived from mobile phones.

They proved that extremely high-powered electromagnetic fields (EMFs) indeed influence learning processes on the synaptic level within the brain, independent from other factors like stress.

Scientists of the Department of Neuroanatomy and Molecular Brain Research (Professor Dr. med. Rolf Dermietzel) in cooperation with the Chair of

Electromagnetic Theory of the University of Wuppertal, performed the new study on rats.

For the experiment, rats were placed into differently powered non-thermal HEFs in the UMTS (Universal Mobile Communication System) operating range. Synaptic learning and memory formation were analysed by electrophysiological methods. Furthermore, all animals were tested for stress hormone release immediately following the HEF exposure.

Although there was daily training and effortless contact to the exposure environment, increases in blood derived stress hormone levels could be detected for all exposed groups. The stress clearly influences learning and memory formation on the synaptic level in the rat brain. High powered EMFs (SAR 10 W/kg) also have a significant effect on learning and memory formation. In contrast to this, weak EMFs (SAR 0 and 2 W/kg) lead to no detectable changes or impairments.

“But in the animal model, it can be demonstrated that neuronal mechanisms of synaptic learning can serve as a target for high powered EMFs,” added Prochnow.

However, there is no need for serious concerns: humans are not exposed to this type of high powered EMFs during dailymobile phone use

Meanwhile the World Health Organization (WHO) has released a study that labels cell phone radiation as a possible carcinogen, a classification that puts it in the same category as lead, gas exhaust, and chloroform. The study was conducted by the organization’s International Agency for Research of Cancer (IARC), which included 31 scientists from 14 countries. This disclosure is based on research that has shown an increased risk for glioma, a malignant type of brain cancer, associated with wireless phone use.

In an excerpt from the WHO/IARC press release, Dr Jonathan Samet (University of Southern California, USA), overall Chairman of the IARC Working Group, indicated that “the evidence, while still accumulating, is strong enough to support a conclusion and the 2B classification. The conclusion means that there could be some risk, and therefore we need to keep a close watch for a link between cell phones and cancer risk.”

Once you have addressed your mattress, you’d be well advised to address the amount of electromagnetic radiation in your bedroom – especially if you are pregnant, or planning to become pregnant.

As discussed by Dr. Klinghardt , electromagnetic fields interfere not only with your biology, but with that of your unborn child as well. He performed a small study showing that autism can actually be predicted based on the EMF levels of your sleeping quarters while pregnant! He found that if you sleep in strong electromagnetic fields during pregnancy, your child will likely begin to exhibit neurological abnormalities within the first two years of life.

Here are several guidelines that can help turn your bedroom into an EMF-free zone suitable for health-promoting restorative sleep:
1. Use only battery devices near your bed — Many electric clocks produce high magnetic fields so use a battery powered clock instead.
2. Turn off the fuses to your bedroom at night
3. Eliminate radio frequency (RF) sources — Radio frequency signals from portable phones, cell phones, and wireless devices have been shown to interfere with your body’s immune system so don’t keep cell phones or charging stations in your bedroom. It’s also recommended to turn off the Wi-Fi in your home at night.

4. Shield your bed with a special metalized fabric, to protect yourself from harmful frequencies that can disrupt cellular communication. This recommendation may be particularly important if you’re pregnant.

5. If you are remodeling you can also use material called ‘radiant barrier’ between the dry wall and the frame of your home. This is a strengthened aluminum foil that will reflect most of the radiation from coming into your home. It should also be applied the ceiling.
It is relatively inexpensive and will also pay for itself in reduced heating and cooling bills. However, it isn’t cost effective if you have to tear out your current walls, so it’s really only practical in new homes or remodeling projects. I installed this in my home when I renovated it and it virtually eliminated all external EMFs. The downside however is that it is VERY difficult to get any cell phone reception in my home.

More recent studies seem to confirm his conclusions, as most of the health problems researchers now associate with EMF and microwave radiation exposure fall neatly into these two categories. One good source that demonstrates this is the 2009 special EMF issue of the Journal of Pathophysiology, which contains over a dozen different studies on the health effects of electromagnetic fields and wireless technology.

Cancer has been high on the list from the beginning, and at least as far as cell phones are concerned, the evidence is overwhelming that cell phone use significantly increases your risk of certain types of brain tumors.
Since cancer can take decades before manifesting, children are particularly at risk, as they are now growing up in an environment saturated with radiation. (Even toddlers are now talking on cell phones!) Today’s children will be exposed to previously unimaginable levels of radiation over the course of their lifetimes.
The BioInitiative Report also includes studies showing evidence for exposure to electromagnetic fields and:
• Effects on Gene and Protein Expression (Transcriptomic and Proteomic Research)
• Genotoxic Effects – RFR and ELF DNA Damage
• Stress Response (Stress Proteins)
• Effects on Immune Function
• Effects on Neurology and Behavior
• Brain Tumors, Acoustic Neuromas, and childhood cancers like leukemia
It seems quite clear that sleeping on a bed that can amplify the amount of radiation you’re exposed to night after night is simply not a good idea.

Shopping for a Safe Mattress
Taking into account that metal coils can act as an antenna and be potentially magnetized, and that most box spring mattresses contain toxic flame retardant chemicals, your safest bet is to look for an organic, chemical-free mattress that does not contain metal coils.
One way to find a safe mattress is to have a doctor or chiropractor write you a prescription for a chemical-free mattress, and then find a manufacturer to make one for you. You can also search for 100% wool, toxin-free mattresses. Many of these mattresses also contain latex for support in lieu of coil springs, giving you the best of both worlds.

You can also avoid the toxins by finding a mattress that uses a Kevlar, bullet-proof type of material instead of chemicals for fire-proofing. I got mine from Stearns and Foster. I’m quite happy with this mattress as it is FAR more comfortable than a number of the organic mattresses I had purchased in the past.

Also keep in mind that metal frames and headboards can amplify and distort magnetic fields, including the natural magnetic field from the earth, which can lead to non-restful sleep. Use natural materials, such as a wood frame, instead.

The rate of breast cancer in Western countries is 10 percent higher in the left breast than in the right. This also is true for the skin cancer melanoma.
Researchers have suggested a surprising explanation for this — and for the dramatic increase in rates of breast cancer and melanoma over the past three decades.
In Japan, there is no correlation between the rates of melanoma and breast cancer, and there is no left-side prevalence for either disease. The rate of breast cancer in Japan is also significantly lower than in the West.
This may be due to differences in sleeping habits in Japan and Western countries. Previous research has shown that people prefer to sleep on their right sides, possibly as a way of reducing weight stress on the heart.
This is most likely the same in both the East and the West, but the futons used for sleeping in Japan are mattresses placed directly on the bedroom floor, in contrast to the elevated box springs and mattress of beds used in the West.
According to Scientific American:
“… [A] 2007 study in Sweden conducted between 1989 and 1993 … revealed a strong link between the incidence of melanoma and the number of FM and TV transmission towers covering the area where the individuals lived …
Consider, however, that even a TV set cannot respond to broadcast transmissions unless the weak electromagnetic waves are captured and amplified by an appropriately designed antenna. Antennas are simply metal objects of appropriate length sized to match the wavelength of a specific frequency of electromagnetic radiation.”
In the U.S., bed frames and box springs are made of metal, and the length of a bed is exactly half the wavelength of FM and TV transmissions. The maximum strength of the field develops 75 centimeters above the mattress, so when sleeping on your right side, your left side will be exposed to the highest field strength.
Dr. Mercola’s Comments:

This Scientific American article highlights some very interesting research from Sweden — a country that is on the forefront when it comes to investigating the harmful health effects of electromagnetic fields (EMF), and micro wave radiation such as that from cell phones.
Although the US is quite resistant to the idea that our everyday technology might be contributing to epidemics like heart disease and cancer, other countries, particularly in Europe, are facing this problem more head on.
Sweden, for example, formed an association called FEB – The Swedish Association for the ElectroSensitive, to address the emerging problem of electromagnetic hypersensitivity. The association produces and distributes educational literature that has helped raise awareness about the phenomenon around the world. Mast Action UK is doing similar work in Great Britain, as well as the Electromagnetic Radiation Alliance in Australia.
With everything I know about the health dangers associated with electromagnetic fields (EMF) and micro waves from cell phones, WiFi routers and cell phone towers, I’m convinced electromagnetic hypersensitivity is a real and looming health disaster.
I’ve previously written about the health dangers of EMFs and other types of radiation, especially in your bedroom, but here the researchers are linking two very specific cancers – melanoma and breast cancer — to commonly used beds, because coil-spring mattresses can actually act as a giant antenna!
Your Mattress – A Restorative Haven or a Disease-Promoting Zone?
In Western countries, the most common type of mattress is an elevated box spring that contains metal coils, while in Japan, people typically sleep on futon mattresses, which typically contain cotton or wool, placed directly on the floor.
According to researchers Hallberg and Johansson, a number of studies indicate that increasing rates of melanoma (the deadliest type of skin cancer) can be linked to immune-disrupting radiation from FM radio and TV transmission towers, adding that “geographical areas covered by several transmitters show higher incidences of melanoma than areas covered by one transmitter.”
Studies have also linked radiation to brain tumors, and DNA damage that might precipitate a number of different diseases and health problems.
These connections are strengthened when you consider the researchers’ explanation of how your box spring mattress actually acts like an antenna; attracting and amplifying whatever radiation might be zipping through your bedroom.
Scientific American explains this quite well:
“Antennas are simply metal objects of appropriate length sized to match the wavelength of a specific frequency of electromagnetic radiation. Just as saxophones are made in different sizes to resonate with and amplify particular wavelengths of sound, electromagnetic waves are selectively amplified by metal objects that are the same, half or one quarter of the wavelength of an electromagnetic wave of a specific frequency.
Electromagnetic waves resonate on a half-wavelength antenna to create a standing wave with a peak at the middle of the antenna and a node at each end, just as when a string stretched between two points is plucked at the center.
In the U.S. bed frames and box springs are made of metal, and the length of a bed is exactly half the wavelength of FM and TV transmissions that have been broadcasting since the late 1940s.
… Radiation envelops our bodies so that the maximum strength of the field develops 75 centimeters above the mattress in the middle of our bodies.
When sleeping on the right side, the body’s left side will thereby be exposed to field strength about twice as strong as what the right side absorbs.”
Could this explain why Japan has much lower rates of cancer compared to the US and Europe, and why the Japanese do not have higher rates of left- than right-sided breast cancer?
I believe it may be a part of the puzzle, yes.
Naturally, there are many other factors that come into play as well, including diet, chemical exposures, and vitamin D deficiency, just to name a few.
However, the theory that you may be promoting cancer by sleeping on a metal coil-spring mattress that amplifies ambient radiation is quite convincing.

Now, a couple of my readers have commented that the quote from Scientific American makes little sense because TV and radio broadcast on a number of different wavelengths, and beds come in many different sizes.

These concerns can also be valid, and I make no claims of having the in-depth technological expertise to either support or refute this particular Scientific American author’s explanation.

However, I believe sleeping on metal is not in your best interest health-wise, (and qualified scientist raised the question to begin with). The total effect will naturally be entirely individual, and dependent on a number of factors, such as the amount of radiation zipping through your room; proximity to transmission towers; number and type of electronics kept in your bedroom and their proximity; your current state of health and your susceptibility to EMF; the material of the rest of your bed… I could go on, but I’m sure most of you are wise enough to get the picture.

Becoming truly health conscious is much like reaching for spiritual enlightenment. It’s not about nitpicking on minor details. It’s about discerning patterns and revealing the big picture. It’s not about avoiding “sins” – in the case of health, avoiding everything that could possibly harm you – it’s about making healthier, saner choices. You can’t make those choices unless you know what’s good for you, and one of the ways you discover better options is by revealing what’s detrimental.

There’s no question in my mind that EMFs can have a dramatic, negative effect on your health, and certain factors may, in some cases, turn up the dial on EMFs and increase it’s harmful effects. Could your mattress do this? I say, “possibly, yes.”

Yet the World Health Organization – the same agency that Brundtland once headed – reports “”there is no scientific basis to link EHS symptoms to EMF exposure.”” WHO’s findings are corroborated by a 2008 study at the University of Bern in Switzerland which found “”no evidence that EHS individuals could detect [the] presence or absence”” of frequencies that allegedly make them sick.

A study conducted in 2006 at the Mobile Phone Research Unit at King’s College in London came to a similar conclusion. “”No evidence was found to indicate that people with self-reported sensitivity to mobile phone signals are able to detect such signals or that they react to them with increased symptom severity,”” the report said. “”As sham exposure was sufficient to trigger severe symptoms in some participants, psychological factors may have an important role in causing this condition.”” The King’s College researchers in 2010 concluded it was a “”medically unexplained illness.””

“”The scientific data so far just doesn’t help the electrosensitives,”” says Louis Slesin, editor and publisher of Microwave News, a newsletter and website that covers the potential impacts of RF-EMFs. “”The design of some of these studies, however, is questionable.”” He adds: “”Frankly, I’d be surprised if the condition did not exist. We’re electromagnetic beings. You wouldn’t have a thought in your head without electromagnetic signals. There is electrical signaling going on in your body all the time, and the idea that external electromagnetic fields can’t affect us just doesn’t make sense. We’re biological and chemical beings too, and we know that we can develop allergies to certain biological and chemical compounds. Why wouldn’t we also find there are allergies to EM fields? Shouldn’t every chemical be tested for its effects on human beings? Well, the same could be said for each frequency of RF radiation.””

Dr. David Carpenter of SUNY, who has also looked into electrosensitivity, tells me he’s “”not totally convinced that electrosensitivity is real.”” Still, he says, “”there are just too many people with reports of illness when chronically near to EMF devices, with their symptoms being relieved when they are away from them. Like multiple chemical sensitivity and Gulf War Syndrome, there is something here, but we just don’t understand it all yet.””

Science reporter B. Blake Levitt, author of Electromagnetic Fields: A Consumer’s Guide to the Issues, says the studies she has reviewed on EHS are “”contradictory and nowhere near definitive.”” Flaws in test design stand out, she says. Many with EHS may be simply “”too sensitized,”” she believes, to endure research exposure protocols, possibly skewing results from the start by inadvertently studying a less sensitive group. Levitt recently compiled some of the most damning studies of the health effects from cell towers in a report for the International Commission on Electromagnetic Safety in Italy.

“”Some populations are reacting poorly when living or working within 1,500 feet of a cell tower,”” Levitt tells me. Several studies she cited found an increase in headaches, rashes, tremors, sleep disturbances, dizziness, concentration problems, and memory changes.
“”EHS may be one of those problems that can never be well defined – we may just have to believe what people report,”” Levitt says. “”And people are reporting these symptoms all over the globe now when new technologies are introduced or infrastructure like cell towers go into neighborhoods. It’s not likely a transcultural mass hallucination. The immune system is an exquisite warning mechanism. These are our canaries in the coal mine.””

Swedish neuroscientist Olle Johansson was one of the first researchers to take the claims of electrosensitivity seriously. He found, for example, that persons with EHS had changes in skin mast cells – markers of allergic reaction – when exposed to specific EM fields.

Other studies have found that radiofrequency EMFs can increase serum histamine levels – the hallmark of an allergic reaction. Johansson has hypothesized that electrosensitivity arises exactly as any common allergy would arise – due to excessive exposure, as the immune system fails. And just as only some people develop allergies to cats or pollen or dust, only some of us fall prey to EM fields. Johansson admits that his hypothesis has yet to be proven in laboratory study.
One afternoon not long ago, a nurse named Maria Gonzalez, who lives in Queens, New York, took me to see the cell phone masts that irradiate her daughter’s school. The masts were the usual flat-paneled, alien-looking things nested together, festooned with wires, high on a rooftop across from Public School 122 in Astoria. They emitted a fine signal – five bars on my phone. The operator of the masts, Sprint-Nextel, had built a wall of fake brick to hide them from view, but Maria was unimpressed with the subterfuge. She was terrified of the masts. When, in 2005, the panels went up, soon to be turned on, she was working at the intensive care unit at St. Vincent’s Hospital.

She’d heard bizarre stories about cell phones from her cancer-ward colleagues. Some of the doctors at St. Vincent’s told her they had doubts about the safety of their own cellphones and pagers. This was disturbing enough. She went online, culling studies. When she read a report published in 2002 about children in Spain who developed leukemia shortly after a cell phone tower was erected next to their school, she went into a quiet panic.

Sprint-Nextel was unsympathetic when she telephoned the company in the summer of 2005 to express her concerns. The company granted her a single meeting that autumn, with a Sprint-Nextel technician, an attorney, and a self-described “”radiation expert”” under contract with the company. “”They kept saying, ‘we’re one hundred percent sure the antennas are safe,'”” Maria told me as we stared at the masts. “”‘One hundred percent sure! These are children! We would never hurt children.'”” She called the office of Hillary Clinton and pestered the senator once a week for six months – but got nowhere. A year later, Gonzalez sued the US government, charging that the Federal Communications Commission had failed to fully evaluate the risks from cell phone frequencies. The suit was thrown out. The judge concluded that if regulators for the government said the radiation was safe, then it was safe. The message, as Gonzalez puts it, was that she was “”crazy … and making a big to-do about nothing.””

I’d venture, rather, that she was applying a commonsense principle in environmental science: the precautionary principle, which states that when an action or policy – or technology – cannot be proven with certainty to be safe, then it should be assumed to be harmful. In a society thrilled with the magic of digital wireless, we have junked this principle. And we try to dismiss as fools those who uphold it – people like Gonzalez. We have accepted without question that we will have wi-fi hotspots in our homes, and at libraries, and in cafes and bookstores; that we will have wireless alarm systems and wireless baby monitors and wireless utility meters and wireless video games that children play; that we will carry on our persons wireless iPads and iPods and smart phones. We are mesmerized by the efficiency and convenience of the infotainment appendage, the words and sounds and pictures it carries. We are, in other words, thoughtless in our embrace of the technology.
Because of our thoughtlessness, we have not demanded to know the full consequences of this technology.

Perhaps the gadgets are slowly killing us – we do not know. Perhaps they are perfectly safe – we do not know. Perhaps they are making us sick in ways we barely understand – we do not know. What we do know, without a doubt, is that the electromagnetic fields are all around us, and that to live in modern civilization implies always and everywhere that we cannot escape their touch.

rsn editor’s comment” This feature article from the Winter edition of Earth Island Journal is a dramatic, well-researched investigation of the huge spike in electromagnetic radiation emanating from a variety of consumer gadgets and of the indifference of both US officials and those who make and sell these devices in the face of some alarming research. – JPS/RSN”

Consider this story: It’s January 1990, during the pioneer build-out of mobile phone service. A cell tower goes up 800 feet from the house of Alison Rall, in Mansfield, Ohio, where she and her husband run a 160-acre dairy farm. The first thing the Rall family notices is that the ducks on their land lay eggs that don’t hatch. That spring there are no ducklings.

By the fall of 1990, the cattle herd that pastures near the tower is sick. The animals are thin, their ribs are showing, their coats growing rough, and their behavior is weird – they’re agitated, nervous. Soon the cows are miscarrying, and so are the goats. Many of the animals that gestate are born deformed. There are goats with webbed necks, goats with front legs shorter than their rear legs. One calf in the womb has a tumor the size of a basketball, another carries a tumor three feet in diameter, big enough that he won’t pass through the birth canal. Rall and the local veterinarian finally cut open the mother to get the creature out alive. The vet records the nightmare in her log: “”I’ve never seen anything like this in my entire practice… All of [this] I feel was a result of the cellular tower.””

Within six months, Rall’s three young children begin suffering bizarre skin rashes, raised red “”hot spots.”” The kids are hit with waves of hyperactivity; the youngest child sometimes spins in circles, whirling madly. The girls lose hair. Rall is soon pregnant with a fourth child, but she can’t gain weight. Her son is born with birth defects – brittle bones, neurological problems – that fit no specific syndrome. Her other children, conceived prior to the arrival of the tower, had been born healthy.

Desperate to understand what is happening to her family and her farm, Rall contacts the Environmental Protection Agency. She ends up talking to an EPA scientist named Carl Blackman, an expert on the biological effects of radiation from electromagnetic fields (EMFs) – the kind of radiofrequency EMFs (RF-EMFs) by which all wireless technology operates, including not just cell towers and cell phones but wi-fi hubs and wi-fi-capable computers, “”smart”” utility meters, and even cordless home phones. “”With my government cap on, I’m supposed to tell you you’re perfectly safe,”” Blackman tells her. “”With my civilian cap on, I have to tell you to consider leaving.””

Blackman’s warning casts a pall on the family. When Rall contacts the cell phone company operating the tower, they tell her there is “”no possibility whatsoever”” that the tower is the source of her ills. “”You’re probably in the safest place in America,”” the company representative tells her.

The Ralls abandoned the farm on Christmas Day of 1992 and never re-sold it, unwilling to subject others to the horrors they had experienced. Within weeks of fleeing to land they owned in Michigan, the children recovered their health, and so did the herd.
We are now exposed to electromagnetic radio frequencies 24 hours a day. Welcome to the largest human experiment ever.

Not a single one of the half-dozen scientists I spoke to could explain what had happened on the Rall farm. Why the sickened animals? Why the skin rashes, the hyperactivity? Why the birth defects? If the radiofrequency radiation from the cell tower was the cause, then what was the mechanism? And why today, with millions of cell towers dotting the planet and billions of cell phones placed next to billions of heads every day, aren’t we all getting sick?

In fact, the great majority of us appear to be just fine. We all live in range of cell towers now, and we are all wireless operators. More than wireless operators, we’re nuts about the technology. Who doesn’t keep at their side at all times the electro-plastic appendage for the suckling of information?

The mobile phone as a technology was developed in the 1970s, commercialized in the mid-80s, miniaturized in the ‘90s. When the first mobile phone companies launched in the United Kingdom in 1985, the expectation was that perhaps 10,000 phones would sell. Worldwide shipments of mobile phones topped the one billion mark in 2006. As of October 2010 there were 5.2 billion cell phones operating on the planet. “”Penetration,”” in the marketing-speak of the companies, often tops 100 percent in many countries, meaning there is more than one connection per person. The mobile phone in its various manifestations – the iPhone, the Android, the Blackberry – has been called the “”most prolific consumer device”” ever proffered.

I don’t have an Internet connection at my home in Brooklyn, and, like a dinosaur, I still keep a landline. But if I stand on my roof, I see a hundred feet away, attached to the bricks of the neighboring parking garage, a panel of cell phone antennae – pointed straight at me. They produce wonderful reception on my cell phone. My neighbors in the apartment below have a wireless fidelity connection – better known as wi-fi – which I tap into when I have to argue with magazine editors. This is very convenient. I use it. I abuse it.

Yet even though I have, in a fashion, opted out, here I am, on a rooftop in Brooklyn, standing bathed in the radiation from the cell phone panels on the parking garage next door. I am also bathed in the radiation from the neighbors’ wi-fi downstairs. The waves are everywhere, from public libraries to Amtrak trains to restaurants and bars and even public squares like Zuccotti Park in downtown Manhattan, where the Wall Street occupiers relentlessly tweet.
We now live in a wireless-saturated normality that has never existed in the history of the human race.

It is unprecedented because of the complexity of the modulated frequencies that carry the increasingly complex information we transmit on our cell phones, smart phones and wi-fi systems. These EMFs are largely untested in their effects on human beings. Swedish neuroscientist Olle Johansson, who teaches at the world-renowned Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, tells me the mass saturation in electromagnetic fields raises terrible questions. Humanity, he says, has embarked on the equivalent of “”the largest full-scale experiment ever. What happens when, 24 hours around the clock, we allow ourselves and our children to be whole-body-irradiated by new, man-made electromagnetic fields for the entirety of our lives?””

We have a few answers. Last May, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC, a branch of the World Health Organization), in Lyon, France, issued a statement that the electromagnetic frequencies from cell phones would henceforth be classified as “”possibly carcinogenic to humans.”” The determination was based in part on data from a 13-country study, called Interphone, which reported in 2008 that after a decade of cell phone use, the risk of getting a brain tumor – specifically on the side of the head where the phone is placed – goes up as much as 40 percent for adults.

Israeli researchers, using study methods similar to the Interphone investigation, have found that heavy cell phone users were more likely to suffer malignant tumors of the salivary gland in the cheek, while an independent study by scientists in Sweden concluded that people who started using a cell phone before the age of 20 were five times as likely to develop a brain tumor. According to a study published in the International Journal of Cancer Prevention, people living for more than a decade within 350 meters of a cell phone tower experience a four-fold increase in cancer rates.
The IARC decision followed in the wake of multiple warnings, mostly from European regulators, about the possible health risks of RF-EMFs.

In September 2007, Europe’s top environmental watchdog, the EU’s European Environment Agency, suggested that the mass unregulated exposure of human beings to widespread radiofrequency radiation “”could lead to a health crisis similar to those caused by asbestos, smoking and lead in petrol.”” That same year, Germany’s environmental ministry singled out the dangers of RF-EMFs used in wi-fi systems, noting that people should keep wi-fi exposure “”as low as possible”” and instead choose “”conventional wired connections.”” In 2008, France issued a generalized national cell phone health warning against excessive cell phone use, and then, a year later, announced a ban on cell phone advertising for children under the age of 12.
We now live in a wireless-saturated normality that has never existed in the history of the human race.

In 2009, following a meeting in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, more than 50 concerned scientists from 16 countries – public health officials, biologists, neuroscientists, medical doctors – signed what became known as the Porto Alegre Resolution. The signatories described it as an “”urgent call”” for more research based on “”the body of evidence that indicates that exposure to electromagnetic fields interferes with basic human biology.””

That evidence is mounting. “”Radiofrequency radiation has a number of biological effects which can be reproducibly found in animals and cellular systems,”” says David O. Carpenter, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the State University of New York (SUNY). “”We really cannot say for certain what the adverse effects are in humans,”” Carpenter tells me. “”But the indications are that there may be – and I use the words ‘may be’ – very serious effects in humans.”” He notes that in exposure tests with animal and human cells, RF-EMF radiation causes genes to be activated. “”We also know that RF-EMF causes generation of free radicals, increases production of things called heat shock proteins, and alters calcium ion regulation. These are all common mechanisms behind many kinds of tissue damage.””

Double-strand breaks in DNA – one of the undisputed causes of cancer – have been reported in similar tests with animal cells. Swedish neuro-oncologist Leif Salford, chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery at Lund University, has found that cell phone radiation damages neurons in rats, particularly those cells associated with memory and learning. The damage occurred after an exposure of just two hours. Salford also found that cell phone EMFs cause holes to appear in the barrier between the circulatory system and the brain in rats. Punching holes in the blood-brain-barrier is not a good thing. It allows toxic molecules from the blood to leach into the ultra-stable environment of the brain. One of the potential outcomes, Salford notes, is dementia.
Other effects from cell phone radiofrequencies have been reported using human subjects. AtLoughborough University in England, sleep specialists in 2008 found that after 30 minutes of cell phone use, their subjects required twice the time to fall asleep as they did when the phone was avoided before bedtime. EEGs (electroencephalograms) showed a disturbance of the brain waves that regulate sleep.

Neuroscientists at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia discovered in 2009 a “”power boost”” in brain waves when volunteers were exposed to cell phone radiofrequencies. Researchers strapped Nokia phones to their subjects’ heads, then turned the phones on and off. On: brain went into defense mode. Off: brain settled. The brain, one of the lead researchers speculated, was “”concentrating to overcome the electrical interference.””
Yet for all this, there is no scientific consensus on the risks of RF-EMFs to human beings.

The major public-health watchdogs, in the US and worldwide, have dismissed concerns about it. “”Current evidence,”” the World Health Organization (WHO) says, “”does not confirm the existence of any health consequences from exposure to low level electromagnetic fields.”” (The WHO thus contradicts the findings of one of its own research units.) The US Federal Communications Commission has made similar statements. The American Cancer Society reports that “”most studies published so far have not found a link between cell phone use and the development of tumors.”” The cell phone industry’s lobbying organization,CTIA-The Wireless Association, assures the public that cell phone radiation is safe, citing studies – many of them funded by the telecom industry – that show no risk.

Published meta-reviews of hundreds of such studies suggest that industry funding tends to skew results. According to a survey by Henry Lai, a research professor at University of Washington, only 28 percent of studies funded by the wireless industry showed some type of biological effect from cell phone radiation. Meanwhile, independently funded studies produce an altogether different set of data: 67 percent of those studies showed a bioeffect. The Safe Wireless Initiative, a research group in Washington, DC that has since closed down, unpacked the data in hundreds of studies on wireless health risks, arraying them in terms of funding source. “”Our data show that mobile phone industry funded/influenced work is six times more likely to find ‘no problem’ than independently funded work,”” the group noted. “”The industry thus has significantly contaminated the scientific evidence pool.””

The evidence about the long-term public health risks of exposure to RF-EMFs may be contradictory. Yet it is clear that some people are getting sick when heavily exposed to the new radiofrequencies. And we are not listening to their complaints.

Take the story of Michele Hertz. When a local utility company installed a wireless digital meter – better known as a “”smart”” meter – on her house in upstate New York in the summer of 2009, Hertz thought little of it. Then she began to feel odd. She was a practiced sculptor, but now she could not sculpt. “”I couldn’t concentrate, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t even finish sentences,”” she told me. Hertz experienced “”incredible memory loss,”” and, at the age of 51, feared she had come down with Alzheimer’s.

One night during a snowstorm in 2010 her house lost power, and when it came back on her head exploded with a ringing sound – “”a terrible piercing.”” A buzzing in her head persisted. She took to sleeping on the floor of her kitchen that winter, where the refrigerator drowned out the keening. There were other symptoms: headaches and nausea and dizziness, persistent and always worsening. “”Sometimes I’d wake up with my heart pounding uncontrollably,”” she told me. “”I thought I would have a heart attack. I had nightmares that people were killing me.””

Roughly one year after the installation of the wireless meters, with the help of an electrician, Hertz thought she had figured out the source of the trouble: It had to be something electrical in the house. On a hunch, she told the utility company, Con Edison of New York, to remove the wireless meter. She told them: “”I will die if you do not install an analog meter.”” Within days, the worst symptoms disappeared. “”People look at me like I’m crazy when I talk about this,”” Hertz says.

Her exposure to the meters has super-sensitized Hertz to all kinds of other EMF sources. “”The smart meters threw me over the electronic edge,”” she says. A cell phone switched on in the same room now gives her a headache. Stepping into a house with wi-fi is intolerable. Passing a cell tower on the street hurts. “”Sometimes if the radiation is very strong my fingers curl up,”” she says. “”I can now hear cell phones ringing on silent. Life,”” she says, “”has dramatically changed.””

Hertz soon discovered there were other people like her: “”Electrosensitives,”” they call themselves. To be sure, they comprise a tortured minority, often misunderstood and isolated. They share their stories at online forums like Smartmeters.org, the EMF Safety Network, and the Electrosensitive Society. “”Some are getting sick from cell phones, some from smart meters, some from cell towers,”” Hertz tells me. “”Some can no longer work and have had to flee their homes. Some are losing their eyesight, some can’t stop shaking, most cannot sleep.””

In recent years, I’ve gotten to know dozens of electrosensitives. In Santa Fe, New Mexico, I met a woman who had taken to wearing an aluminum foil hat. (This works – wrap a cell phone in foil and it will kill the signal.) I met a former world record-holding marathoner, a 54-year-old woman who had lived out of her car for eight years before settling down at a house ringed by mountains that she said protected the place from cell frequencies. I met people who said they no longer wanted to live because of their condition. Many of the people I talked to were accomplished professionals – writers, television producers, entrepreneurs. I met a scientist from Los Alamos National Laboratories named Bill Bruno whose employer had tried to fire him after he asked for protection from EMFs at the lab. I met a local librarian named Rebekah Azen who quit her job after being sickened by a newly installed wi-fi system at the library. I met a brilliant activist named Arthur Firstenberg, who had for several years published a newsletter, “”No Place to Hide,”” but who was now homeless, living out of the back of his car, sleeping in wilderness outside the city where he could escape the signals.

In New York City, I got to know a longtime member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) who said he was electrosensitive. I’ll call him Jake, because he is embarrassed by his condition and he doesn’t want to jeopardize his job or his membership in the IEEE (which happens to have for its purpose the promulgation of electrical technology, including cell phones). Jake told me how one day, a few years ago, he started to get sick whenever he went into the bedroom of his apartment to sleep. He had headaches, suffered fatigue and nausea, nightsweats and heart palpitations, had blurred vision and difficulty breathing and was blasted by a ringing in the ears – the typical symptoms of the electrosensitive. He discovered that his neighbor in the apartment building kept a wi-fi transmitter next door, on the other side of the wall to his bedroom. When Jake asked the neighbor to shut it down, his symptoms disappeared.

The government of Sweden reports that the disorder known as electromagnetic hypersensitivity, or EHS, afflicts an estimated 3 percent of the population. A study by the California Department of Health found that, based on self-reports, as many as 770,000 Californians, or 3 percent of the state’s population, would ascribe some form of illness to EMFs. A study in Switzerland recently found a 5 percent prevalence of electrosensitivity. In Germany, there is reportedly a 6 percent prevalence. Even the former prime minister of Norway, Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, until 2003 the director general of the World Health Organization, has admitted that she suffers headaches and “”strong discomfort”” when exposed to cell phones. “”My hypersensitivity,”” she told a Norwegian newspaper in 2002, “”has gone so far that I react to mobile phones closer to me than about four meters.”” She added in the same interview: “”People have been in my office with their mobile hidden in their pocket or bag. Without knowing if it was on or off, we have tested my reactions. I have always reacted when the phone has been on – never when it’s off.””
“”People are reporting these symptoms all over the globe. It’s not likely a transcultural mass hallucination.””

Using a mobile phone for longer than 10 years increases the chance of getting brain cancer, according to the most comprehensive review of the risks nevertheless published.

The study which contradicts official pronouncements that there is zero danger of getting the sickness found that people who have had the phones for a decade or more are usually twice as likely to have a malignant tumour along the side of the brain where these people hold the handset.

The scientists who conducted the research say using a cellular for just an hour each working day during that time period is enough to increase the risk and that the international common used to protect people from the radiation provided is not safe and needs to be revised.

That they conclude that warning is needed in the use of mobile phones and think children, who are specially vulnerable, should be disappointed from using them at all.

Official assurances that the phones feel safe have been based on study that has, at best, included only a few folks who suffer from been exposed to the radiation for long enough to get the illness, and are therefore of little or no value in assessing the real chance.
The new study on course by two Swedes, Teacher Lennart Hardell of the University Medical center in Orebro and Mentor Kjell Hansson Mild of Umea College, who also will serve on the MTHR programme?s management committee goes some way to be able to meeting the deficiency.
The scientists drawn together the results in the 11 studies who have so far investigated the appearance of tumours in people who have utilised phones for more than a several years, drawing on research within Sweden, Denmark Finland, Japan, Germany, the United States and Britain. They found almost all experienced discovered an increased danger, especially on the side of the pinnacle where people followed their handsets.

A few of the six research of malignant gliomas, cancer of the glial cells which support and shield the nerve tissues, found an increased risk. The only one that didn’t still found an increase in benign gliomas. Four of the five studies in which looked at acoustic neuromas benign yet often disabling tumours about the auditory nerve, which usually cause deafness found them. The exception was based on only a pair of cases of the disease, but still found that long-term people had larger tumours as compared to other people.

The professionals assembled the results of all the studies for you to analyse them jointly. This revealed that folks who suffer from used their phones for a decade or more are 20 per-cent more likely to contract traditional acoustic neuromas, and 30 per-cent more likely to get dangerous gliomas.

The risk is even greater on the side of the head the handset is used: long-term people were twice as prone to get the gliomas, and two and a half times more likely to receive the acoustic neuromas there than other people.

The researchers conclude: Results from present studies on use of mobile phones for more than Decade give a consistent routine of an increased risk for acoustic neuroma and also glioma. They add that ?an greater risk for other types of brain tumours cannot be eliminated.

Professors Hardell and Mild have also themselves accomplished some of the most extensive initial work into tumours amongst long-term mobile phone users and have come up with even more alarming results. Their studies suggest they are more than 3 times more likely to get malignant gliomas than other people, and also nearly five times more likely to get them on the side of the pinnacle where they used the phone. For traditional neuromas they found a new threefold and three-and-a-half-fold increased chance respectively.

They have also carried out the only examine into the effects of the particular long-term use of cordless telephones, and found this also greater both kinds of tumours. His or her research suggests that utilizing a mobile or cord less phone for just 2,000 hours less compared to an hour every time of day for 10 years is ample to augment the risk.

Mentor Mild told The Independent on Sunday: I think it is quite strange to determine so many official delivering presentations saying that there is no danger. There are strong indications that something happens soon after 10 years.He stressed that brain malignancies are rare: that they account for less than Only two per cent of main tumours in Britain, though they’re disproportionately deadly, causing Seven per cent of the years of life lost towards the disease. Every cancers is one too many, he was quoted saying.

He said he uses a mobile phone as little as possible, along with urges others to use hands-free equipment and make just short calls, booking longer ones for landlines. He also said which mobiles should not be directed at children, whose thin skulls and developing nervous systems make them especially vulnerable.

The danger could be even greater than the new study suggests regarding, as Professor Gentle says, 10 years is the minimum period required cancers to develop. As they normally take for a long time, very many more can be likely to strike long-term customers after 15, 30 or 30 years which leads some to fear that an epidemic from the disease could create in the coming a long time, particularly among today?s young people.

On the other hand, the mentor points out that the level of radiation emitted through phones has lowered greatly since the 1st ones came available on the market more than a decade in the past, which suggests that exposures as well as risks should also be dropping. But he still recommended choosing telephones that give out very little radiation as possible (notice below), and pointed out that people are now furthermore exposed to many other reasons for radiation, such as masts along with Wi-Fi systems, though these kinds of emit much less compared to mobile handsets.

Britain?s recognized Health Protection Company which has taken a careful view of claims in which radiation from mobiles, their masts and Wi-Fi installations can damage health admits that the study could possibly be indicative of a risk, but says that ?such analyses cannot be definitive.

The Mobile Providers Association said: This isn’t new data for that World Health Enterprise and the many independent expert scientific committees whom state that there are no proven health risks from using cell phones that comply with worldwide guidelines.

Both sides acknowledge that there is need for much more research. Professor Moderate said a possible outcomes of mobile phones and Alzheimer?s condition should also be examined, since we have indications it might be a problem and also a possible link with Parkinson?s ailment, which can?t be eliminated.

In the meantime, the scientists want a revision of the emission common for mobiles and other sources of radiation, they will describe as inappropriate and not safe. The global standard is designed merely to prevent harmful home heating of living tissue as well as induced electrical voltages in the body and does not take the risk of getting cancer malignancy into account.
Professors Hansen and Mild serve for the international BioInitiative Working Group of leading scientists and public health experts, which this summer created a report warning how the standard was countless times too lenient.

The BioInitiative report added: It has been established beyond reasonable doubt that some unfavorable health effects take place at far lower levels of exposure some at several thousand times under the existing safety restrictions. It also warned that unless this is corrected there could be ?public health problems of a global nature.

Example: ?Mobiles are the smoking with the 21st century; they need well being warnings?
Neil Whitfield, a 49-year-old father regarding six, developed a great acoustic neuroma in Mid 2001 after years of large mobile phone use, about the left side in the head, to which he’d held his phone. He says he had simply no family history of the condition and that when this individual asked a specialist exactly what had caused the idea, the doctor had requested him if he used a mobile.
I was on it 4 hours a day, easily he admits that. When I held the idea to my brain, I could feel my personal ear getting cozy.

He adds that they completely lost his / her hearing in his still left ear and had been off work for Twelve months. Unable to go back to his or her old job in marketing, he became a teacher, suffering a new Ł20,000 drop in income.

It has experienced a devastating impact on my family, he says. Cellphones are the smoking in the 21st century; they should have got health warnings to them. You would never purchase a child a group of cigarettes, but many of us give them mobiles which could cause them injury.

Warning: your model might be dangerous
Exposure to radiation, shown as Specific Absorption Price (SAR) levels, varies extensively in different models. Suppliers and the Government have ignored the Stewart report that urges they end up being clearly marked in phones and containers. They are thus nearly impossible to find, though the Carphone Warehouse catalog includes them. The easily accessible list of phones and radiation exposures is actually published in Philippines, where low-radiation models, understood to be having SAR of 3.6 or underneath, are encouraged.

WiFi radiation from laptops, smartphones is damaging your sperm
The latest in a long line of radiation vs. sperm studies has shown, yet again, that you really ought to take your laptop off your lap. The report, published in the Fertility and Sterility journal by some Argentinian scientists, details how semen samples from 29 healthy, potent men suffered significant damage when placed underneath a WiFi-connected laptop.

In a control test — with the sperm kept away from WiFi emissions, but at the same under-laptop temperature — 14% of the sperm died within four hours, and 3% showed DNA damage. When placed underneath a laptop for four hours, 25% of the sperm died and 9% showed DNA damage. The important finding here is that WiFi electromagnetic (EM) radiation damaged the sperm — almost every other study has focused on increased temperature (which also damages sperm, incidentally). http://www.planetloungeradio.com/blog/?p=243

Before you go out and buy a lead jockstrap, though, bear in mind that this is ex vivo — the sperm were outside the testes — and the scientific study does not go as far as to say that that EM radiation actually affects your chance of getting a girl pregnant. Basically, it’s entirely possible that the (thin) skin of your testicles is enough to stop WiFi signals from cooking your little men — and furthermore, you constantly produce sperm throughout the day, so unless you preface every conception attempt by having a laptop on your lap for four hours, you should be OK (though I fear I probably just described the standard evening setup for most households…)

Perhaps more importantly, though, this study does show that very weak, low-frequency radiation does have an effect on sperm. We might know the extent of that effect, but this is proof that we at least ought to be careful. If anything, it reaffirms that we shouldn’t keep a notebook on our lap for a significant amount of time — and the same should be said of an iPad, Kindle Fire, or your choice of WiFi-enabled gizmo. You probably shouldn’t keep WiFi permanently enabled on your smartphone, either.